You’re cruising along on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, telling yourself that the animatronic displays are only mechanical objects but wondering in the back of your mind if maybe, just maybe, they somehow come alive at night, when suddenly, your pager goes off. Darn! Your boss promised he’d beep you only in case of an emergency!
“Probably got his stupid tie stuck in the copy machine again,” you grumble as you head for a pay phone. The “emergency”? Payroll loaded the wrong checks on the printer, and they want to know how to reprint. Yeesh!
If you’re like most of us in IT, this scenario hits too close to home. Usually, calls like this occur only at the most inopportune moments, such as when you can’t access the company’s computer. Wouldn’t it be great if you could access your company’s network simply by plugging a credit card device into some kind of universal node? Then, you could just log into your company network and send the appropriate commands, and the payroll checks would be all set to reprint. Well, this technology isn’t ready yet, but it’s close. A number of companies, including IBM and Sun, are working on a solution that will turn your LANs and WANs into AANs (Access Anywhere Networks), a term I coined to describe pervasive computing.
Pervasive computing is the concept of allowing access to any computing device from anywhere at any time. In theory, you could be sitting on the beach in Hawaii and printing reports from your AS/400 onto your company’s network printer while sending email to your kids at college and turning the temperature down on the central air unit in your home in Illinois.
Currently, there are at least three major pervasive computing initiatives: IBM’s Smart Card, Sun Microsystems’ Jini (pronounced “genie”), and IBM’s Home Networking Solutions. Each extends the concept of networking beyond the wired world you are familiar with.
Smart Card
IBM’s Smart Card is a credit card-sized device that stores personal information on a small, highly secure silicon chip. The Smart Card technology, a joint development by IBM and the OpenCard Consortium, uses the OpenCard Framework (OCF) 1.1 reference implementation developed at IBM’s Zurich laboratory. This framework uses Java-based
middleware to allow other Java-based applications to interact with the Smart Card, regardless of the platform.
In practical terms, these cards could easily interface with systems such as your AS/400, point-of-sale (POS) terminals, and handheld devices such as the PalmPilot. As if that isn’t cool enough, IBM has also developed the technology, in the lab anyway, that allows your body to act as the conduit for the data stream between the Smart Card and the computing device. This technology allows data exchange by passing a low-level electrical charge through your body from the card to the device. While this technology hasn’t made it into the mainstream yet, the fact that it exists suggests that it’s only a matter of time.
Sun Microsystems’ Jini is a Java-based network plug-and-play technology. Jini’s very ambitious goal is to make hardware and software configuration problems obsolete. By establishing a standard method (called the “Java Tone”) through which network devices can automagically “discover” and communicate with one another, Sun is paving the way for a truly user-friendly network. If you have a PC on a network somewhere and someone plugs a new copier into that network, the PC immediately knows that the new device exists and is able to talk to it. It doesn’t matter that the PC uses Windows NT and the copier uses the vendor’s proprietary software; both also use the Jini middleware to communicate with one another. This has both good and bad ramifications: good because setting up a network will be as simple as laying the infrastructure and plugging in devices, bad because network administration responsibilities may become nonexistent. Better polish up that resume!
Home Networking Solutions
IBM wants home builders to use Home Networking Solutions (part of the Home Director product line) when designing and building new homes. Its open architecture sets the stage for future expansions that can turn your home into its own little network. The current initiative is designed to allow devices such as home entertainment centers and home PCs to be networked together, but why stop there? Using the open architecture and Java, this same technology could easily be expanded to connect your home to your company network. Imagine! Your HAN (Home Area Network), another new term I coined, will talk to your company WAN as easily as you pick up the phone and call grandma.
Peering into the Future
I can see the future. You’re at home in your easy chair, watching Jeopardy 2001, when suddenly, the Smart Card in your pocket notifies you of a problem with the nightly batch run on your AS/400. You grab the remote control, and the Smart Card sends a command through your body to the remote via an electrical charge. Your TV switches to a Picture-in- Picture (PIP) and activates your cable modem. Seconds later, your home network is plugged into your company’s WAN. The network “senses” you and, following a predefined script, displays the messages from QSYSOPR. You answer a message that lets the batch job continue processing and close the connection. The PIP disappears, and before you know it, you’re telling Alex Trebek to give you “Mood Music of the ’70s” for $1,000. Ah, technology! Ain’t it grand?
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